Deb --
For a very long-winded story of a school library that did "bookstore
arrangement" of fiction by genre very badly, read my 2002 posting to LM_NET
from the archive: *http://tinyurl.com/74ka8 *. That particular library went
on to have more than 45 fiction "subjects" by the time we left and the
questionable assignments of books to subjects just continued to multiply.
To do it for a whole fiction collection is difficult -- it means each and
every book can "belong" to only one genre -- a dangerous assumption. (It's
like limiting yourself to one Subject Heading for a book!)
If you're going to do it, do it for just the most obvious genres. The
easiest way to start might be to put symbol labels on the spine, e.g., skull
for Mysteries, heart for Romance, while leaving the books in Author order.
Then you can easily pull one "genre" -- whether for a permanent separate
section or for a temporary display.
Frankly, in a secondary library I think recognition of AUTHORS should be
strongly encouraged. Though books would be sorted by Author within genre (if
you chose that style of organization), it would limit students' awareness of
other books written by the author -- in a different genre. For example, if a
student finds Laurie Halse Anderson's "Fever 1793" in Historical Fiction,
they might not come across her "Speak" (which would go where? Real-life,
Contemporary Fiction? Life Issues?) Taking another author from the "A"
shelf, what about Avi? How many genres would his books be spread across?
I have never seen it done in a K-2 library -- maybe it would work well --
though so many picture books defy single categorization. In my last primary
library I had a long, low shelf and I put out ten plastic baskets which
could each hold about 20 picture books. Then every month I created laminated
labels for the baskets (picture + word) identifying ten different "genres"
or subjects, whether "Dragons", "Magic", "Bedtime", "Imagination", "Going to
the doctor", "Toys", "Mystery", "Friends", "Halloween", "Emotions", etc. I
then filled the baskets with appropriate books. It was fun to consider
commonalities between books on an ongoing basis -- and helped me expand the
picture book subject headings in the catalog.
More importantly, it increased circulation -- simply because I was pulling
books out in new and different combinations -- and changing the display
frequently. I think that can be more useful than permanently departing from
Author-sorted fiction systems.
Identifying a book's "genre" is more subjective than identifying a main
author, so in terms of "intellectual access", people are more apt to be able
to find a book on their own in an author-sorted system -- at least in my
opinion. Which is why I always have to go to the information desk in a
Borders to find out where they have shelved a book.....
Oops, I've written another long-winded diatribe.
-- Katie Day
katie.appleton.day@gmail.com
day.appleton@gmail.com
Singapore
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